


The Details That Define Us

by ariel2me



Series: London Spy [2]
Category: London Spy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 04:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18045257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: “The man I knew was exceptional. The man you knew was not. Unless you’re going to tell me how many sugars he took in his tea, or how he liked to be fucked. Are these the details that define us?” (London Spy, episode 4)Danny refused to believe that the one and only detail that should define Alex was his exceptional brilliance, to the exclusion of all others.





	The Details That Define Us

Alex never took sugar in his tea, and it was none of Marcus’ damn business anyway how Alex liked to fuck or be fucked. Danny could tell him, oh how Danny could tell him, all about the tea-drinking, the fucking, the loving and the awful, messy, beautiful, wonderful, confusing and contradictory business of living, but Marcus clearly had no interest in those pesky details, details that he saw as matters of extreme triviality, unworthy of any serious consideration, let alone a place in the grand scale of what truly defined a human being, and an  _exceptional_  human being at that.   

 _I like. I love. I yearn. I hunger. I need. I feel._ Are these truly worthless in comparison to  _I think_? Was the life of the mind the  _only_  one worth living, the only kind of life we should not be ashamed of and hiding from? Was the life of the mind the only one we should be proud to be reaching out for?

**___________________________**

What was it exactly that made the Alex that Danny had known unexceptional, in Marcus’ eyes? Was it because the only parts of his life that Alex had shown Danny, had shared with Danny, were the ordinary ones, the unexceptional ones, the common features shared by a large swath of humanity, the features that Marcus would deem trivial and pointless, no doubt, for their very ordinariness and unexceptionality? Or was it because  _being_  with Danny,  _loving_  Danny and  _staying_  with ordinary and unexceptional Danny had made Alex ordinary, had washed away everything that used to be exceptional about him?

Class, background, money, education, distinction – Danny was so far down the ladder compared to Alex. He had no illusion about how the world saw their differences, his and Alex’s. Would Marcus, Danny wondered, have said the same things he had said to Danny, if his former student and protégée whose brilliance of mind he so admired had fallen in love with a wealthy London stockbroker from an aristocratic background, say?

Perhaps he would, Danny decided. Perhaps Marcus would also view that hypothetical wealthy stockbroker as being completely unworthy of Alex, completely undeserving of sharing a life with Alex and being the recipient of his love.  _Stockbrokers_ , Marcus might sniff.  _Clever chaps, perhaps, in their own way, with their tricks of the trades to make more money out of money, but not intelligent, and not, god knows, exceptional in any real way that matters. Alex deserves someone who could challenge him intellectually, someone who is his peer in the realm of the mind, someone who could share his life of the mind at his level and on his own terms._

Someone who was not, god forbid, Danny the warehouse worker bee, or even Daniel the wealthy stockbroker. They were all unworthy of Alex, and of Alex’s brilliant mind and far superior intelligence.  

**___________________________**

_Marcus: You didn’t know, did you, how smart he was?_

_Danny: I knew._

_Marcus: But not really._

_Danny: Not in the way you did, no._

_Marcus: His partner. Without any appreciation of his intellect, beyond some generalized idea that he was good with numbers. Love without knowledge. Popular culture might depict that as a romantic notion, I suppose._

_(London Spy, episode 4)_

**___________________________**

It had hurt, hearing this; there was no denying that fact. It had made Danny question almost everything about their relationship: its origin, its path of progress, how it might have ended ( _would_  have ended, inevitably, according to Marcus) if Alex’s life had not been cut short so tragically and prematurely.

Alex had chosen to hide this side of himself from Danny. Though, it could be argued that it was his job and his identity as a spy that Alex really wanted to hide, not the brilliance of his mind.  

Still, love without knowledge, or at least, a certain kind of knowledge, about a certain part of Alex’s life.

 _I never knew him at all_ , Danny feared, had feared even before Marcus came into the picture _. I never knew the real Alex, the true Alex, as he truly was._

But why had Marcus, and Danny himself, for that matter, assumed that the only  _real_  Alex is the one Danny  _hadn’t_  known? That there was only  _one_  true thing about Alex, having to do with his work as a spy, and having to do with his superior intelligence and his brilliant mind? What about the other sides of Alex, the ones Danny  _had_  seen and  _had_  known?

 _I contain multitudes_ , roared the poets.

 _Well, so does Alex_ , Danny would have liked to roar.

 _So did Alex_ , he had to settle for instead.

There it was, the inescapable cold brutality of the past tense, and of the English language, where there was no hiding the dead, where reminders of the absenceof the dead lurked on every corner and in every sentence.

**___________________________**

The specific accusation being leveled against Danny was this: that he was nowhere near smart enough to know, let alone to appreciate fully, the exceptional man that Marcus and Frances had known and appreciated.

But had Marcus and Frances themselves truly known and appreciated all there was to know about Alex, in all his multitudes? Marcus wanted Alex to change the world. Frances wanted Alex to redeem her life. Did they know what Alex  _himself_  wanted, beyond their very specific notion of what  _they_  wanted _for_  him, and what they believed he  _should_  have wanted for himself?

**___________________________**

_Danny: I think that … being admired … is lonely._

_Marcus: You’re right, I’m sure. But that was the price he had to pay. The ordinary world wasn’t for him. And his flirtation with it was always going to end badly._

_(London Spy, episode 4)_

**___________________________**

All these people – Marcus, Frances, Alex’s bosses at the spy agency – taking it upon themselves to decide what the price was that Alex must pay for his brilliance, for being a genius, for being extraordinary. It was one thing if Alex himself had decided this, had decided which price and sacrifice he was willing to pay and to make, but it was being decided  _for_  him by people who insisted that it was  _their_  prerogative to decide, presumably because Alex was deemed too precious, or too fragile, or both, to decide for himself.   

Alex was starved for affection, for love, for the human touch, for the barest sign of contact and comfort.

Alex had wanted more than just the life of the mind. But he did not value it less because he also needed something more; he needed something  _in addition_  to his life of the mind, not  _instead of_  his life of the mind.   


End file.
